Crossroads and Unholy Water

Waiting Room

 Waiting Room Pain is a songless bird pecking at the ears. An animal which howls when the moon flares. In the dampness. In the silence. In the night. Where it whirls inside with a breath that burns the skin. Pain is why I sit here in the waiting room, doubting the day. Pain is my mother singing in the garden with a green scarf in her hair, a bird-of-paradise flower on her shoulder. Too beautiful. Too much to approach. Too empty to leave me whole. Pain is a child who banged her head to sleep. In candlelight. And old French songs on the brown radio Grandmother gave away. It is a friend’s prayer at dusk when his mourning doves were quiet and these would not leave the opened cage long after he was dead. Pain is your face as you undressed to seduce me; your eyes, pallid when morning comes and you have fed your passion to lingering ghosts. Pain is missing your love when you have too much pain to have any love to give. ...